Tag Info

The bits you put in parentheses don't (necessarily) take me out of the narrative. They are the character's opinions of people and events. That takes me deeper into the character, which is a big part of where the story is.
One test for such parentheticals is: Do these opinions characterize the character in a way that serves the story?
As Lauren points out, ...

It doesn't really matter. You will be rewriting to close plot holes, provide foreshadowing, clean up continuity, either way. What matters is that you don't set up artificial obstacles to your writing and write whichever way gives you the most flow.
Personally, I'm an exploring writer and any kind of planning stops me dead in my track. I write my novels as ...

Imagine you are travelling to a foreign country with different laws, customs, traditions and so on. You (the reader) travel in the company of someone who is familiar with that country (the narrator). That companion will warn you of the most deadly pitfalls (such as the death sentence for drug trafficking or that you get your hand hacked off for shop ...

I'm not sure what multiple points of view would have to do with how you introduce the laws of magic in your world.
In general, I think a narrative flows better if you can introduce the rules spread out through early sections of the book. Otherwise, you have a long dry intro. If you can summarize your rules fairly quickly, like a page or so, you could simply ...

I think the approach to this is to make what you write entertaining. Try to keep the style light, so you're not overwhelming the reader with facts.
Use a steady build up, make the first few chapters skipable by someone who understands the field, but allows the layman to grasp the basics of where you're going.
Keep the obvious stuff at the beginning, with ...

It seems to me to mostly depend on your target audience.
Scientists of this field will want full throttle facts,
General scientific types will expect to be convinced by strong backable data
Interested non-scientists may relate more to argument that make sense and are logical rather than specific proof,
The general skeptic reader will not trust any ...

I don't see any tense changes in your examples. It all appears to be in past tense. The reason the reader has the perception of the passages happening in present tense is due to the narrator presenting their rendition of the events in the way a storyteller would.
To clarify, your examples give the impression of somebody telling a story around a campfire, ...

Without an example it's hard to tell, but if you feel like you are writing too much dialogue in proportion to the rest, then perhaps your gut is telling you to dial it down a little. As always, if you read a lot of well written stories, you'll have a good idea of where your story lies in terms of style.
Then again, if you're writing a scene like one of the ...

Successful example: Arthur C. Clarke's Rama series. The first book, Rendezvous with Rama, read to me like a history book written 50 years from now. Very hard sci-fi, technical, a bit dry. The next three in the series, written with Gentry Lee, are more typical fiction, and center on the adventures of one family who are (I think — it's been a while) ...

I think it be best if you show the rules and the consequences of breaking them in easily digestible chunks. Don't overload the reader with too much at once. A easy mistake to make would be forgetting that you know the rules like the back of your hand, while your reader will be encountering them for the first time.
Heck I be tempted to not explain the rules ...

I believe you must set up all the rules of magic, and the story world as a whole in the first act. Even if you're not doing 'acts' as such, you should set up the rules before your protagonist begins his/her problem solving. You can hide them like a whodunnit hides clues, but they must be there from the start otherwise the readers will feel you're making ...

Well, you are the author so it is really your call. If you feel that there is too much dialogue, then odds are that there is. Perhaps there needs to be more of a narrative voice to pull it all together and then you can eliminate some of the dialogue that is used to advance the plot.

The transition seems fairly smooth to me, probably because the action doesn't feel like action: It feels like the continuation of the musings in the earlier paragraphs.
Maybe this is because we're not seeing the setup, but I think the entire excerpt feels rushed. This is someone who's thinking through reasons why life just doesn't make sense, but I'm not ...

I use this scale:
all the characters sound like the author
nice tight writing, some of the characters sound similar
nothing needs added, nothing needs taken away
rich, full characters; might be a little wordy
wonderful dialog, where's the plot?
Aim for three settle for two or four. Avoid one and five unless you want to prove that you are good enough to ...

There's nothing technically wrong with doing this, but you're right to think it sounds fishy. I'd suggest confining exclamations like these to dialog. Ultimately, though, you'll have to rely on your ear and the ears of your beta readers.